Total War: Rome 2 patch 14 brings campaign and AI improvements

Beta testing of this Total War: Rome 2 patch 14 has been completed and it’s now live.

This game update focuses on battle and campaign improvements with battle AI having been tweaked, especially on siege weapons. The AI appears to be one of the main focuses of this patch and it’s good to know that it’s grown some balls and will defend settlements instead of running away like big blouses.

There’s a plenty to digest in the notes so read them carefully.

Battle

• Unit ‘stuttering’ in battle has been improved.
• Improved reflections in rivers on the battlefield.
• Ship reflections now appear correctly in battles.
• Fixed a crash in large scale multiplayer battles containing over 14,000 combined soldiers in total.
• Fix for a crash which occurred when selecting reinforcements on the minimap during battle replays.

Campaign

• Reduced the game’s memory usage in Campaign modes, and when saving Campaign games.
• Fixed a rare crash which happened when placing the mouse over a building in the construction queue.
• Rare Campaign crash fixed, which triggered shortly after battle results were displayed.
• Fixed a crash which occurred after an un-walled port assault in Hannibal at the Gates campaign.
• Fixed a very rare texture crash when moving the camera around the campaign map.
• A rare crash which occurred after declining to fight a battle as a reinforcing army while the camera was still moving on the Campaign map has been fixed.

Battle AI improvements:

• Significant improvements to attacking siege AI’s use of siege engines, allowing them to better co-ordinate assaults through breaches and gates while also reusing previously docked siege vehicles.
• Improved AI’s ability to re-start siege assault tactics after responding to units sallying out of a settlement in a siege battle.
• Fixed an issue in the attacking siege AI which could cause individual units or small groups of units to split off from the main force and attempt to burn the city gates elsewhere.
• Improved the Battle AI’s usage of artillery to breach walls in siege battles.
• Made a range of improvements to battle AI pathfinding in settlement battles.
• Fixed an issue in a specific Egyptian city map variant which caused the AI to ignore siege equipment and always opt to burn down the gates.
• Fixed a bug in the deployment system which could cause the attacking siege AI to deploy far away from the city, sometimes facing the wrong direction.
• Fixed a bug which sometimes prevented the attacking siege AI from recognising existing wall breaches from previous battles in the same campaign turn.
• Introduced evasive manoeuvres in defending siege AI for units defending walls which are under enemy bombardment and are likely to collapse.
• Fixed an issue in the attacking siege AI where AI units would sometimes be assigned incorrectly to siege vehicles, or multiple AI units would be assigned to the same siege vehicle.
• Improvements made to the Battle AI’s evaluation of task priority in settlement battles, enabling it to better direct attacks against higher concentrations of enemy units, as well as co-ordinate more effectively with reinforcements.
• Fixed a bug in siege battles when the player was defending, which caused ally AI armies to become idle in certain situations.
• Improved AI’s wall targeting in siege battles, to prevent it from attempting to dock two siege towers on the same wall segment, for example.
• Enabled the Battle AI to better co-ordinate attacks in settlements through multiple breaches, gates or streets simultaneously.
• Fixed a rare crash bug which occurred when an AI general’s bodyguard unit is completely killed while the rest of the army is entering the breaches in a siege battle.
• Introduced better co-ordinated attacks from multiple directions in minor settlements as well as some fortified settlements.
• When a unit under Battle AI control is changing formation, due to being attacked on multiple fronts, it will now take more consideration of its facing, to avoid presenting the enemies its back or flanks.
• Fixed issues where AI’s naval reinforcement units became unresponsive after splitting up into multiple groups upon disembarking.
• Battle AI will now use melee units in addition to missile units to defend settlement walls when useful.
• Fixed issues with battle AI’s sally out behaviours in settlement battles.
• When defending a settlement against bombardment from naval artillery, battle AI is better able to attempt to avoid casualties.
• Improved AI deployment logic for several settlement maps.
• Occasionally units given move orders on the battlefield would remain stationary for a while before moving. This has now been reduced.
• Fixed an issue which sometimes allowed the attacking siege AI to command their siege towers into settlements.
• Fixed issues in the attacking siege AI in naval siege battles, which caused some disembarked units to go idle.
• Battle AI is now more likely to pick up siege equipment, when it’s been dropped by other units being killed.
• Fixed a bug where the Battle AI was incorrectly determining whether it had sent a unit to pick up a piece of siege equipment.
• Fixed a battle AI issue in which it would move to capture courtyards with victory points but fail to actually take the capture points due to its placement of units within the courtyard.
• Battle AI made more aggressive when attacking unfortified settlements to avoid losing due to timeout.

Campaign AI improvements

• Campaign AI is now more likely to defend settlements instead of running away. This should lead to bigger and more frequent battles.
• Improved Campaign AI siege behaviour – Campaign AI now tends to maintain sieges longer and construct more siege equipment against major settlements when besieging.
• Improved Campaign AI building repair behaviour.

General battle improvements

• Units on the battlefield now blend / fade out when they get very close to the camera, to avoid clipping / seeing into the unit models.
• Improved siege vehicle docking, to reduce the chance of ladders rotating back and forth indefinitely, when attempting to dock against a walls in siege battles.
• Battle replays now save and replay the weather as it was in the battle being recorded.
• Fix for capture points sometimes being connected to the wrong buildings in some battles with multiple capture points.
• Improved the combat behaviour of flanking enemies while attacking in formation, so the units are more concerned with attacking the flank of the enemy unit, rather than drifting to the front of the enemy, and potentially nullifying the flanking attack.
• Units can now fire at animal handlers once they’ve released the dogs.
• When the player selects multiple siege vehicles and attempts to dock them on a wall, only one will be given the order. The player must now manually order siege vehicles to dock on a settlement wall.
• Battering rams will no longer cause collision when they are destroyed.
• Units now more effectively pick up battering rams that have been dropped while they were attacking gates.
• Improved how units move through wall breaches:
  • Individual men will not attempt to walk through solid fort walls as their unit passes through a breach.
  • Fixed cases where units ordered into settlements via a breach would not move.
• Siege vehicles are less likely to get stuck on small buildings and rocks outside of a settlement, becoming inactive.
• Reduced units from climbing siege ladders in single file, up one side of the ladder.
• Fix for units ignoring docked siege towers in favour of ladders and captured gates where the siege tower offered a more appropriate route.
• Attackers can no longer see defenders in multiplayer land/naval battles during the deployment phase.
• Fixed a bug where units in defensive stance were not reacting correctly when attacked in melee and therefore not performing as well as expected.
• Cavalry will no longer be able to push through enemy units without experiencing losses.
• Balkan General units will now have the expected melee attack value in battle.
• Units will no longer continue to target and attack an enemy unit if they lose visibility of it.
• Improved pathfinding for large attacking AI armies in unfortified settlement battles, so the army does not become idle when attempting to reform.
• Adjustments to morale mechanics to limit certain defender exploits.
• Units will now look further for targets when on walls, to increase melee engagement.
• Capture points have been removed from custom coastal battles.
• Stopped AI controlled units getting stuck and spinning in one spot after disembarking in the medium Alexandria battle map.
• Fixed a Greek minor port map, to prevent ships from going through the shore when disembarking.

General Campaign improvements

• Fixed a bug that made Vigiles units disappear from garrisons in Campaign modes.
• Fixed an issue with undestroyed transported armies were being destroyed on the campaign, if their transporting army was destroyed in battle.
• Faction’s fame levels can go up and down, but you could never return to fame level 0. This has been fixed.
• Fixed an issue where in some situations, after sacking a settlement, the game would re-issue an order to sack the settlement again.
• Grand Campaign map snow now appears correctly on settlements in the North East of the map.
• Added some missing localised audio to the start of the fly camera fly over at the beginning of the Hannibal at the Gates Campaign, when playing as the Arevaci faction.
• Campaign AI will no longer pick galleries siege equipment.
• The Duty Calls event in the prologue campaign will now trigger correctly, preventing a progression blocker.
• Thracian Warriors added to Odrysian Kingdom garrisons.
• Upgrading certain buildings will no longer remove units from available recruits pool.
• Objectives requiring specific buildings will now trigger correctly after the building is constructed.
• Edicts will no longer remain active in provinces that are shared with a client state if the faction stops being your client.
• Resynchronisation has been sped up in Multiplayer Campaign mode.
• A congratulatory message in the Grand Campaign, which incorrectly triggered when winning a battle by ambushing and AI, instead of successfully defending against an ambush has been fixed.
• Swapped the bonuses for the “Votive Offering” and “Feast” barbarian festival campaign events.

Usability Improvements

Battle

• Siege vehicles will now correctly line up with bastions when docking.
• When a player commands a group of units to enter an enemy settlement with multiple ladders docked, the units are less likely to all focus on climbing the same ladder.
• Units will no longer clip through / walk under the terrain near a gate in a Barbarian City map variation.
• Fix for un-reachable bastions in Barbarian city maps.
• Fixed a gap under a gate in the Carthage (large) battle map.
• A map where ships would sail across the land while attempting to disembark has been fixed.
• Improved deployment zones and collision placement in several battle map variations.
• Fixed a floating river in Eildon battle map.
• Improved collision around battlefield town tiles, to make units navigate around them more effectively.
• Tooltips will now show up when placing the mouse over barbarian ports on the battlefield.

Campaign

• A progression blocker has been fixed in Multiplayer Campaign mode, when pressing “end turn” at the exact same time as the turn timer reaches 0:00.
• “Ally under attack” interface in Campaign modes is now clearer when both attacker and defender are the players allies.
• UI fix for when an AI unit attacks the players faction, the retreated during a Campaign end turn sequence, which caused the auto resolve window to pop up and close immediately.
• When the campaign tactical map is opened at the same time as pressing the end turn button, the campaign camera will no longer get locked in place / be un-movable when the turn ends.
• Solved an issue that caused false desyncs after a resync had been performed in multiplayer.
• Fixed an overlapping tooltip text when hovering over an enemy agent on the Campaign map.

General

• A New system has been put in place to handle when a player disconnects from a multiplayer game. Instead of causing a draw, this judges which player is in a better position upon connection loss. Draws are now much rarer and more representative of the battle conditions.
• Sound settings changes in the options menu, now take effect when saved, without the player having to re-open the sound options menu.
• Fixed Quick Battle disconnections which occurred when entering the lobby.
• Fixed a crash caused by Steam not running.